Death of the Liberal Class

by Chris Hedges (Nation Books; $24.95)

In this uncompromising rant, Hedges indicts the press, the Church, the arts, labor unions, universities, and the Democratic Party for failing to protect the middle and lower classes from the depredations of corporations and their enablers in government. The case is there to be made, but Hedges hopscotches haphazardly through a century of liberal disappointments, and doesn’t begin to support his conclusion, in which he anticipates the collapse of civilization and recommends survivalist measures and “a return to radical militancy.” All the same, much here is intriguing, such as Hedges’s profiles of two “liberal defectors” who, like him, once wrote for the Times: Doug McGill, who says that he was “always a pawn in the big game,” and Sydney Schanberg, whose righteous style wasn’t welcome at the paper after his return from Cambodia. ♦